Targeting in Missions

As part of a team at World Harvest Mission called the "Emerging Generations" team, I've always felt a small amount of discomfort. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but I was never quite comfortable with the idea that we were going to London to "reach the emerging generations." I think Doug Pagitt put his finger on my discomfort. Sorry for being on a Pagitt kick tonight, but he's really speakin' to me.
Again, it's from Reimagining Spiritual Formation. He says "targeting is done by tobacco companies and snipers, and the one who is targeted is rarely appreciative."
That's it! I want to be able to talk freely about why I'm in London - not in code, not giving only half the story, but freely and openly, to the very people I'm "targeting". If I can't do that, maybe I need to rethink why I'm there!
I'm especially interested in feedback from my sisters and brothers in WHM. What do you guys think? How do you think about church-planting in a way that doesn't make us like snipers or tobacco companies?

Learning the Christian Language

I realize this title might turn some of you off - don't let it stop you from reading further. I'm not referring to learning a special subset of the english language for use in Christian settings. I'm talking about an approach to church that views the entire Christian life as analogous to learning a foreign language. I ran accross this paragraph in "Reimagining Spiritual Formation" by Doug Pagitt pastor at Solomon's Porch in Minneapolis. I'll quote the whole paragraph, then comment further. I'm not really sure of the etiquett for quoting and linking on blogs, if anyone has any input, I'm open.
Doug writes: "In many ways, becoming Christian is much like learning our native language; we pick it up when we are immersed in it. I would guess that nearly all of us spoke and communicated long before we started our formal education. What we then learned in school was not the beginning of language use, but the refining of it. In educational settings, the theory of language acquisition through immersion is by far the most successful means of learning. So it is with Christian faith. Rather than seeing Christianity as belief we acquire in a completed form, we ought to enter into it with the understanding that we are at the beginning of a life-long process of discovery and change. Ours is a faith that is lived, from beginning to end."
I like this comparison of Christianity to language learning for a couple reasons. First, when learning a new language, the worst possible way to do it is to learn a set of facts about the language. Some of the interns that were with me this past summer in Spain learned that even though they were getting "A"s in their spanish classes, they really weren't all that comfortable actually speaking the language. Training people in a set of truths about God, Jesus, and Humanity may not be the best way to help them actually live in the way of Jesus. Much better to immerse both ourselves and newcomers to the community of faith in life together.
Second, knowing facts about a language isn't the best test of how well a person knows the language. My best friend in high-school was Uruguayan. He also almost failed spanish class. Did he know Spanish? Sure. He spent most of the time correcting our teacher. But when it came to the rules of grammar and how to conjugate verbs, he was often at a loss. Many times in the church we measure how well someone is progressing in the faith (or whether or not they are even part of the faith) by how well they can explain the faith and their experience of it. Somer and I find it difficult sometimes to explain what we implicitly understand and do and experience with relationship to God. This caused us problems when we were evaluated by World Harvest Mission two years ago - making them wonder about our intimacy with God. I mention that not to criticize WHM, but to say that I've experienced first-hand the misunderstanding and frustration that comes from forgetting the language-like nature of our faith.
What if we viewed church as one long experiment in learning the Christian language? I think I want to ponder this some more and come back to it in a few months. I'd love to hear how some of you see these ideas playing out in your specific context.

Ilford

For those of you who are interested in where we're moving to, here's a map of London. Ilford is in the north-east part of the city. (Geography not your strong suit? Look in the upper-right section of the map.)

Party

Never lacking an excuse to throw a party and get together with people. That should be one of the marks of the church.
So, in that spirit, we are throwing ourselves a party before we leave for London. It'll be at Jim & Steph's house, where we've been living for the past few months. Sunday, January 9 at 7 PM.
It's hard (especially for me) to say good-bye to people. My wife has learned that when I say "it's time to leave", I really mean "it's time for me to say good-bye to people, and I'll be ready to leave in 45 minutes." So I'm hoping this party will allow us to see many of the people we care about in the Philadelphia area. We'd love to see you there - drop me an e-mail or post a comment if you're interested in coming and need directions.

Holidays

We're off to Baltimore tomorrow. Hoping to see some of you while we're down there.
Please ask God to help us enjoy time with family - really enjoy them for who they are, not for how they make us feel.
I'll have on and off internet access, so may update things a little less frequently for the next week.
Dan

Money

so i spent part of today filling out paperwork for my pension plan with world harvest. it's something that i've struggled with on several levels. first, i've heard all the stuff about being responsible with our money, planning for the future, making sure we take care of our families, being good stewards, etc. but it still gnaws at me: "why do i need a pension?" i feel like i'm just saving for the sake of saving. building up more wealth for the sake of building it up. the second reason i struggle with it is because i LOVE money. i like to think about it. i like to look at account balances because there's something alluring there. i felt the desire to be served by money sinking its hooks into my heart - beginning to force me to serve it instead. that's the way it always is with the things our hearts love. we think they will serve us, but in the end, we serve them. we think they'll bring life, but instead they suck it from us.
so, i finish the day feeling like a little life has been sucked out of me, right onto the page where i made my pension allocation instructions.

Rest

a friend recently said that she thinks busyness is a main manifestation of spiritual warfare in the u.s. given what i just said in my last post about being busy, this is personally relevant.

busyness
it's subtle. it feels good to accomplish something. who ever felt guilty for getting something done?

what does my enemy want? separation, barrenness, destruction, death. all easily accomplished through the forgetfulness brought on by my busyness.

how do i avoid it?

God says STOP IT and remember that it is I who am God - Psalm 46

this has echos in the book of Hebrews, where he says "There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who *enters God's rest also rests from his own work,* just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience." Heb 4:9-10.
How does one enter that rest? the author of hebrews says it's by fixing all their attention on Jesus - all their hopes, all their dreams, all their faith.

The rythm of the original "Sabbath" - taking one day in seven to rest, is expanded in Jesus. it becomes the daily rythm for all who connect to God through Jesus. life in Jesus is life in God's rest. every day is an opportunity to stop MY work, and enter his REST.
that's what i'm going to do right now - take some time to meditate on Jesus, and so cease from my busyness, and enter God's rest.

Drained

activity is going on at a furious pace in our house. monday and tuesday i helped assess new missionaries for world harvest. i told my father-in-law this weekend that i'm not sure what value i bring to the process. i feel like i'm so inexperienced, and so eager to take risks, that i'll approve anyone who loves jesus and still has a pulse (even if it's weak and erratic). but be that as it may, they let me sit and talk to some prospects for an hour at a time. not exactly my idea of the best way to get to know someone (not really even among the top ten best ways to get to know someone), but nonetheless it's the only way we know.
then tuesday evening I came home and made support calls. today we worked all day getting our visa applications together. please pray for favor (favour, in my new home city) from the authorities reviewing our application, and pray God's blessing on them. then it was on to more calls tonight.
last night i was a bundle of energy (I'm on of those people who gets more energized the more people we talk to). tonight, i'm writing, hoping to tire myself out.

Party in Baltimore

heading to London on 2-months notice means we have to raise a whole lot of money in a small amount of time. it's way too much for us to raise unless God shows up in a huge way.
however, one of the exciting implications for me is that i am forced to contact lots of people to see if God wants to provide some of our need through them. so we've been getting to connect to people we wouldn't ordinarily see. This past saturday we had a party at mom and dad's house in b'more. about 25 people there - some of whom have known me my whole life, and prayed consistently for me over the past 26 years. it's humbling and encouraging and energizing to experience the love of God's family in that way.
thanks to all who were there.
we found out about a few more gifts this weekend, and need only $328/mo in new pledges of support.

Barack Obama

Anybody know anything about Barack Obama? I mean, besides that he's this amazing speaker, a 'rising star' in the Democratic party? I caught a snipet of a book signing he was doing at B&N in NYC. Someone asked him how he reconciles his religion with politics. He had this very insightful response (I'm paraphrasing from memory):

Religious belief by its very nature is absolute. If I believe that Allah is God, then Allah is the only God - not Buddha or anyone else. If I believe that Jesus is my savior, then he is my savior, and no one else is my savior. But we live in a pluralistic world, and our political system is a pluralistic one in which people with opposing ideas and worldviews can come together in dialogue. This means there's a tension between the absolute of faith and the pluralism of American politics. Here's how I personally live with that tension: when I read scripture, my interpretation is subject to my own error, my own sinfulness. So I always approach it with an understanding that I could be wrong. I bring a sort of skepticism, like saying 'this is my interpretation, but what do you think about it?' That skepticism allows me to disagree with other politicians while at the same time listening to them to see if maybe I am wrong. It prevents me from preemptively shutting down all dialogue.

I've got to chew on what he said for a while. i'm interested in what his religious persuasion is.

Beyond the Postmodern

It has been fashionable of late in the circles where I find myself to discuss postmodernity. It’s hard to carry on a conversation without someone dropping the word “Pomo” in hopes of sounding hip. ‘the pomo church…’ ‘pomos want community, authenticity, blah, blah blah…’ there’s also the flip-side of the conversation, those in my church community who are trying to stem the tide as the culture flows downhill into the perceived abyss that postmodernity creates. several sermons in the past year have railed against postmodernity. ‘it denies all absolute truth.’ ‘it tells our young people that everything is relative.’ and on and on the criticism goes.
problem is, postmodernity as a project has come and gone.
Jeremy Rifkin writes “What we end up with at the end of the post-modern deconstruction process are modernity reduced to intellectual rubble and an anarchic world where everyone’s story is equally compelling and valid and worthy of recognition.
“If the post-modernists razed the ideological walls of modernity and freed the prisoners, they left them with no particular place to go. We became existential nomads…forced to find our own paths in a chaotic and fragmented world that is even more dangerous than the all encompassing one we left behind.”
pardon the long quote, but Rifkin beautifully captures what some in the church are saying about post-modernity. surprisingly, his purpose is not to destroy post-modernity. Rifkin argues that Europeans have already done that. Europe has moved beyond post-modernity in favor of a global quest for human rights and sustainable quality of life (according to Rifkin). meanwhile, many Americans are still stuck in modernist assumptions about the world.
so, who are we (my church community) speaking to when we engage ‘the post-modern’. Europeans? no, they’ve moved beyond us. Our fellow Americans? well, maybe the few who are ‘hip’ enough to cling to an ideology that the rest of the world has exposed as inadequate.
and we wonder why the rest of the world views us the way they do. they don’t hate us. they just kind of hold us in bemused contempt.

Call

so what’s your call?
we had a couple over for smores and peppermint hot chocolate; and to talk about London. we had asked them to pray about supporting us financially, and they wanted to know more about what we were getting ourselves into. i know the woman a little better than her husband, and it was she who asked me about my call to London.
my initial response to the question was: calling is a load of crap. this of course was not an appropriate answer, and she told me so. but i was speaking out of personal dissatisfaction with the way the term “calling” is used in the church in the USA.
it seems like much that passes for “calling” is little more than a strong desire. a guy likes to speak, and wants to do it in a way that people will listen to him…so he starts to think he’s “called” to preach. those who are not “called” into leadership in the church use the fact of their non-calling to abdicate responsibility. i have actually heard people say that it’s the responsibility of the pastor to preach the gospel to the unsaved (because that’s what they’re called to do) and other people in the church should just bring their friends to get preached to.
i'd rather have people say “hey, i like to preach” or “i don’t feel like sharing the gospel with my neighbor…it’s too scary,” and be done with it.
Os Guinness in his book The Call says that we are first and foremost called to belong to God. anything else we do in life is in response to that first call. i love that! whatever i do, i do it in response to the fact that i belong to God. hence the title of this blog.
so maybe i'm ranting a little, but i wish we’d spend more time responding to our call to belong to God, and less time worrying about what we’re being “called” to in life. what was it St. Augustine said? love God and do as you please?

Change

lots of changes going on in our home over the past week. our housemates had their baby yesterday - baby erika was born at 9:10 am. the other three kids are eagerly waiting for the new addition to arrive home.
we began contacting people about providing financial support to our family while we minister in London. the humble place of a receiver in a society that is built on the exaltation of self-sufficiency. just think of the twinkle you get in your eye when you hear about someone being "financially independent" and how much you want to be them. we are totally financially dependent - not exactly something most people strive for - not something i particularly want to strive for. but so it is.
we've begun to talk to andi and jodie about the move to london. so far, they want to bring their blankets, their pacifiers, their clothes, and their potties. i'm sure the list will grow.
the certainty and urgency of getting to london in January still feels a little surreal. especially given the way our lives have gone the past two years. here's how our friend michelle describes the course of our life in a recent e-mail:

ready, set, go
stop!
pause
switch tracks--go!
WRONG TRACK GET BACK TO THE FIRST ONE
RUN RUN RUN HURRY GO

Contemplative Prayer

ever consciously started to pray by being quiet and just listening? on sunday i led our adult sunday school class in an exercise in contemplative prayer. on of our elders began the morning by reminding us that prayer is about conversation with the living God. in conversation, we don't always talk...sometimes we listen.
so, we had people begin by reading a passage from Isaiah and listening for a word or phrase that spoke to them. they read either Isaiah 25:6-9 or Isaiah 53:1-10. we then took 3 minutes of silence to be quite and listen for God's voice in the passage.
then, because God speaks through the Bible, we read Matt 26:26-28 in conjuction with the Isaiah passage, and then took silence to listen for how God's message grew richer.
finally, we had people look at one of several paintings that were done in response to the last supper, and again took silent time to allow the visual images to draw out the multi-faced beauty of God's word.
we asked people to take five minutes to write a short prayer of response to whatever the Lord had been saying to them that morning. some people responded with repentance, others with adoration and praise.
then, the scary (and some would say bold) part: we asked for volunteers to read their prayers to the congregation during the celebration of the Lord's Supper at the main worship meeting that morning.

here's why i'm so excited about this: first, it was just plain cool. people who did the exercise were blessed immensely by it. second, it puts into practice a number of the values that i think are key in the emerging church. things like the need for "white space" as my buddy Dan Macha would say - a conjunction of time and space that is consciously carved out for listening for the voice of God. things like valuing the input of all members of God's family. modern churches called this "every member ministry" but didn't execute it practically in the way they run their worship services...Paul called it the way things were in the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 14:26 and following. I had always read these verses as a condemnation of the chaos caused by various people having things to say during the "service", of of the reason for why we only let the pastor speak and plan things out ahead of time, but lately i'm wondering if he wasn't saying that since everyone has something to offer, they should each be given a chance to offer it in an orderly way that demonstrates the value of what each person brings. maybe i'll post on this more later. Emerging Worship first turned me on to this way of understanding the passage.)

Election Perspectives

is president bush this country's David, or is he our Saul? In the book of Samuel in the Old Testament, Israel asked God for a king - and the Lord delivered...but it didn't exactly turn out the way Israel thought it would. saul was a man who appeared to be just what Israel needed at the time. but in the end, he led Israel away from her God. then the Lord replaced him with a man after his own heart - David.
i've heard a lot in the media lately about how the church got bush elected. so i'm wondering - will it turn out the way we hope it will? or will God maybe give us what we've asked for, only for us to realize we have no idea what we've really asked for?
Andrew Jones asks Is God up to something in USA? the ensuing discussion is great. certainly i don't agree with everything that's been posted, but people raise some great questions. i especially resonate with the post that connects the church's calling with God's call to Adam to fill the earth and subdue it. in Jesus, our true existence as humans is restored. we take our place as God's representative rulers - his "vice-gerents" as my seminary profs used to call it. this is what it means for the Kingdom of God to come.
what's all this mean for the USA? i'd love to read your thoughts

We're Going to London!

we heard from London City Mission today. they have invited us to spend a year at one of their outreach centers. the biggest news for us is that they want us to arrive in London the middle of January! that gives us just two short months here in the States before we leave. in a sense it's sooner than we expected...but in another sense, it's fantastic. our lives have been in limbo for a while - not a bad place to be, needing to meet Jesus in the midst of uncertainty - but it's also nice to meet Jesus on the road to London.

London City Mission

for the last two years the city of London has been on our hearts. the entire story of how it got there and what's happened as a result has interesected nearly every part of our lives. we were ready to move there a year and a half ago to be part of an effort to see new fellowships of Jesus-followers raised up in the city. the group we were going with, however, asked us to wait for a year. we had been living a whirlwind that involved seminary in three years and bringing two children into the world. we needed a break. we needed to learn to be near our Father. rest. intimacy. at 24, it's pretty hard to hear someone tell you you're burned out and your marriage is heading for trouble if you don't do something about it (that's a problem 40 year olds are supposed to have). but it was what we needed. it was what our Father knew would woo us into deeper romance with him.
but in the midst of all that, he never took London off our hearts. in the coming months, we are hoping to move to london for a year to learn more about the city and be involved in the movement of our Father's kingdom there. we have asked London City Mission if we can join the work at one of their outreach centers. on tuesday, they will be making their decision. pray with us that our Dad would make his will known to us in the decision of LCM, and that through it all his heart would become ours.

Maturity in the Emerging Church

we had a good time of prayer and laying our hearts out before each other and the Lord this morning. thanks to all of you who were joining us in prayer.
one of the issues that came up i think merits a wider discussion: what is the role of older, more mature christians in the emerging church? for many boomers in the american church, the emgerging church looks young and feels too 'hip' for them. we saw it when we started having a public worship gathering led by our college group at church. the older people who came to the first one felt like they were out of place. i don't think they disliked what was going on...but they felt like they didn't fit in. they didn't stick out to me, but they said they felt like they stuck out.
how do we as young leaders in the church draw from the experience and wisdom of those who have gone before us, and at the same time not push them into the background? it seems to me that the emerging church is a place for anyone who genuinely desires to express their devotion to Jesus in real, personal ways, and wants to experience the nearness of his Spirit, no matter the age. how do we empower the grey-haired (or no-haired) among us to be turned loose for powerful ministry in the emerging church?

London Prayer

We're meeting tomorrow morning at 9 to pray with two other couples about church planting in London. these couples are significantly older than Somer and me, and we would be privileged to minister alonside them. they have been serving in the church in america and in africa for many years. we have much to learn from them.
pray the Holy Spirit will make clear whether he's calling us to be a team together in london.

Lectio Divina

sunday night during our regular meeting with group of young adults from our church we practiced the ancient method of meditation on scripture called lectio divina. we used the story of Zachaeus from Luke 19. i had done something like it once before when i was in north africa, but it was the first time most of the rest of the group had done anything like it.
i really enjoyed it because it allowed each member of the group to seek the Lord on their own, and then to bring what the Lord was teaching them in the passage as an offering to the rest of the group. the primary focus was on listening to the Lord in his word, and out of that experience of him encouraging each other.
part of lectio divina involves looking for a word or phrase that sticks out from a passage, and then repeating that phrase silently, seeking to hear the voice of the Lord. at the risk of cheapening the experience, i'll share with you the phrase that hit me:
"here and now i give half my possessions..."
no further explanation...just let that sit with you for a while

Bethany

Off to a banquet for Bethany Christian Services. will let you know more about it when i get back

[Update] The banquet was incredible. bethany was celebrating 1000 children adopted into families in the deleware valley area. very moving stories from a woman who had given her child up for adoption at age 16, several families who adopted children through bethany, and children who had been placed in adoptive families. and yes, we gave money (that was the point of the evening, after all). the banquet came at the interesting time in our lives where God has been reminding us that all we have is his and our call is to respond to his giving of himself by giving away what he has given us.
amid all the political rhetoric that's flying about and annoying most of us, it was refreshing to hear stories of grace and be reminded that Jesus is transforming all of creation, including how people experience family.
speaking of how people experience family, we ended the evening by going out for some low-carb ice cream with our house-mates.

Giving Money

Sunday night we have a group of young people come to our house for dinner and worship/bible study. last sunday we read about how people in the early church would bring gifts and put them at the feet of the apostles. the pastor had used this passage from Acts to teach that people should give money to their local church. the connection between me and the early church left me feeling a little empty inside. here's why:
like everything else in america, i'm prevented from seeing the entire process. i don't grow my food (except a few herbs and some spinach) - i buy it at the store all ready for me to eat. i don't grow cotton, don't put it through the gin, don't spin it into thread, don't weave cloth, can't sew (not very well, at least) but i wear all kinds of cool clothes. my shoes were made by people i've never met in morocco, and the music i listen to is played by artists i've never seen.
same with the money i give. i hand it over, and i have no idea where it goes. yeah, i can read the church's budget, but again, i'm removed from the actual end result.
i have a feeling that the money the early church laid at the apostle's feet went to feed the widow who lived on the next block - the one you saw every day. you know she was helped by the money you gave because you saw her preparing food the next day after she hadn't eaten in two. the orphans who received some of the clothes you gave sat next to you at the church's dinner, looking much better now they were fully clothed.
i'm not saying we should stop giving to the church. and i certainly don't want to remove the blessing of giving blindly. jesus said our giving should be done in a way that our right hand doesn't know what the left is doing. but i think that's different from just blindly handing over the money to the elders to pay for the machine that is the church. especially when the things the early church used the money for are the things my church designates for its special once-a-month "deacon's offering", which is supposed to be above and beyond any regular giving to the church.
apologies for the long post. i'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

Life's a Zoo?

Sitting in front of our fireplace with a smoldering log. My life is far removed from the dangerous. Fire is just one more thing to box up and enjoy from a distance. We even have fire insurance plans to protect us if things get out of hand. Is this a 21c American thing, or do all humans put danger in a cage?

Welcome

Thanks for dropping by! In the coming days and months you'll find posts on all sorts of topics. Think of them as trail markers on the walking tour of my life.
I've been wrestling with the notion of being a steward lately (hence the blog title). What it means when God says "You are not your own, you were bought at a price." The paradox of the whole thing is that this journey I'm on, this life I'm living that I love so much and am so intimately connected to, it doesn't even belong to me. I'm going to have to give an accounting of it to God one day.
So...here we go. Thanks for joining me on the journey, and stop back often.